Water Pump gone
 

I have a 2000 Boxster 2.7 with 86K miles and I just lost my water pump. I had the car towed in and when I removed the pump the entire fin unit was now a stump on the end of the drive shaft.

My question is- is there a way to flush out the system so that all of the bits and peices of the pump don't block my cooling system or return to the (N) pump and distroy it!

I was thinking I could remove the thermostat housing and reach into the cooling manifold to get what is in that area but what about the engine and radiators? Any good way to do this short of a full disassembly of the entire system?

HELP!

You may be hooped. Do a Search, but my recollection is that there are small passages in the heads that you likely won't be able to clear out, creating hot spots and potential cracking.

I'm changing out my pump in the next few weeks as preventative maintenance (along with installing the 160 degree thermostat and "S" oil cooler). Although I "only" have 92,000 km on the car, the water pump is still 10 years old.

I agree with replacement...mine on has 19k miles, but is original to the car and nine years old. I've read the horror stories about cracked heads and feel proactive measures are in order; just wish I would have done it a year/half ago, when I installed the LN low temp t-stat and renewed the coolant.

OP, I'd be very leery about running the engine, knowing the passages are likely blocked...the experts will hopefully chime in, but I see some engine disassembly in your future.

The problem you are facing is that you need to back flush (in the reverse direction of normal coolant flow), and remove the thermostat from the housing at the same time to have any hope of getting most if not all of the stuff out of the system. That requires building some fixtures that accomplish this and passing the outbound water through a filter screen to be able to see when you’ve gotten everything that is going to come out.

Even with all this, you will still never get it all out; there are just too many nooks and crannies where bits can get hung up.

Thanks all for your input-

JPA of PA, Do you know of any pics or details on setting up a reverse flow system? If it is fairly easy to set one up I can do it myself but if it takes alot of expensive special tools then I will probably take it to my mechanic- Damn!

No pictures or drawings as we fabricated our own out of a collection of hose, fittings, spare empty thermostat housing, a 10 gallon collection tank, pump, and filter unit. Our is also capable of re-heating the water to speed up the clean out process, and some of the fittings required alloy welding capability. Not overly complicated, but it was time consuming to assemble and probably cost a couple hundred in parts.

The unit basically connects to the car at the short hose sections that are underneath the bottom tray of the car, and runs the heated water backwards through the system to the filter and tank where it is returned to the car. Using it with an alloy cooling system cleaner (we use Prestone) it can also be used to flush out a system after an intermix problem, but in that case we circulate for a bit, then dump to the drain and run clear water through until everything is out.

Thank you JFP in PA for your input. I was able to contact my mechanic and he guided me through a crude / simple way to back flush the system. I retreived about 60% of the impeller in three large chuncks (found behind the thermostate) and the remaining in a grindings pile about 3/8" in dia. Short of taking the entire system apart I think this is the best I will see. Hopefully any remaining parts will be small enough not to block flow or return to the pump and take out the new one!!

Thanks again to all that responded!

Thanks to JFP for chiming in...in your opinion, is the OEM pump still the best replacement component out there? I don't want to install something that's going give as much trouble as the one that's presently sitting on my engine, waiting to implode.

We use only the OEM Porsche water pumps.

htm475, what was the simple way to backflush the system?